Quarantine
by supernovagirl99
Summary: In a dystopian world, a wall has been built to keep those deemed infected from spreading their disease leaving a silver haired boy and an ebony haired girl on opposite sides. Oneshot.


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 **Quarantine**

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 _Why do we build the wall?_

 _My children, my children_

 _Why do we build the wall?_

 **XXXXX**

A small silver haired boy clutched his mother's hand as he stared up at the massive cement barrier that was designed to keep them in.

A disease they called it. They were being kept here for their own protection. As his amber eyes glanced around at the others that had been rounded up, he could not put together a single tie that bound. There were demons and humans of every race that existed...and none of them looked sick.

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 _Why do we build the wall?_

 _We build the wall to keep us free_

 _That's why we build the wall_

 _We build the wall to keep us free_

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School was once a place to come to ask questions, to learn, to be curious yet the question the small ebony haired girl kept asking was never answered.

"Where did the other children go?"

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 _How does the wall keep us free?_

 _My children, my children_

 _How does the wall keep us free?_

 **XXXXX**

The small silver haired boy shivered as he rubbed anxiously at the sore on his arm as he stood next to his mother and waited for their rations. They had said it was a shot to prevent them from getting worse but shots didn't blink and they didn't stay raised for days on end. The small boy fretted that something had gone wrong and he would get worse so he had asked the nurse at his school why it still hurt after a week but she had gotten angry and insisted it was normal.

Mother scolded him for asking questions and warned him not to draw attention to himself. He didn't understand. If something was wrong, why shouldn't he ask for help? Isn't that why they were in quarantine? For their own protection?

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 _How does the wall keep us free?_

 _The wall keeps out the enemy_

 _And we build the wall to keep us free_

 _That's why we build the wall_

 _We build the wall to keep us free_

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As the small ebony haired girl watched her Saturday morning cartoons, she smiled as the colorful images reflected in her sapphire eyes.

The fairy's wings were soft as petals and coloured just as gay as she flitted across the soft meadow grass occasionally pausing to capture the sickly looking bugs that launched toward her in a beautiful blue bubble. The fairies had locked them away for they were far too dangerous but many of them had been overlooked and it was every fairy's duty to protect their kingdom. As her translucent wings fluttered and she soared gracefully across the land, she suddenly came to a soft stop in front of a menacing looking stone wall.

"Oh no," the fairy's sweet voice gasped as she quickly turned and fled, "I cannot go any further. This is where the bugs are kept. To go inside, would be to die."

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 _Who do we call the enemy?_

 _My children, my children_

 _Who do we call the enemy?_

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The ebony haired teenager knew she shouldn't be here but what was life without a little adventure? They'd blocked off this portion of the city ten years ago when the disease first broke out. All the residents in the area were evacuated into quarantine for their own protection so they could be treated without spreading it to anyone else but surely, after all this time, whatever plagued those citizens wouldn't still be active.

In the fog the city street was blurred like an old painting; the girl smiled inwardly as she mused it could be a great work drawn by expert hand. The buildings and the Japanese cherry trees were silhouetted black, two-dimensional. The streets grew in every direction without only the old newspaper dispensers and street-lamps to break the view between buildings so high that the tops disappear in the swirling white. It must've been run down before the disease had spread because it was utterly decrepit now, several buildings had collasped and there were boards on many windows.

There were many odd things here and there now that she thought about it. She'd never seen bars on windows before for example. It seemed silly and like it would block the view but it was probably very effective at keeping someone in or out. They did have some very interesting art on the sides of several of the buildings. Bright lines forming very elaborate letters and symbols she didn't recognize. As she stared at the strange art, she frowned. She had seen something like that before when she was a child. The neighbor boy, who was about the age she was now, had been making it when the police came and dragged him away. His mother had looked for him everywhere, posting signs and offering rewards until one day she stopped and it was announced that she found her son.

Sighing, the girl shook the memory from her mind as she turned to leave but not before casting a fleeting glance at the abandoned street behind her.

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 _Who do we call the enemy?_

 _The enemy is poverty_

 _And the wall keeps out the enemy_

 _And we build the wall to keep us free_

 _That's why we build the wall_

 _We build the wall to keep us free_

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The sun beat down without mercy as the silver haired teenager toiled on always aware of the masked men behind him. As much as he hated picking those damn peppers, he knew it was necessary. The exercise would keep them from getting worse or so they were told.

It worked from what he could tell. Most everyone was doing well. Occasionally someone would succumb to the disease, whether it began with a cough or a runny nose, but they were always quickly escorted away so the disease wouldn't spread. He assumed they must have died from whatever it was they all had for he never saw them again.

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 _Because we have and they have not!_

 _My children, my children_

 _Because they want what we have got!_

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The ebony haired woman sighed as she entered the pristine elevator. Don't get her wrong. She was grateful to come to work each day. She knew the government had placed her at this facility based on their evaluation of her aptitudes.

As she exited the elevator onto her floor, she idly glanced out the floor-to-ceiling window which faced the barrier that separated those who could destroy everything they had worked so hard to build with a single cough from the dutiful citizens who helped fund their treatments.

It was strange, however, that the disease somehow still managed to spread despite their meticulous sterilization practices. Sometimes someone would be at work one day and gone the next without any warning. They were never truly safe. As the woman slid into her desk, she breathed a relieved, happy sigh as she cast an affectionate glance at her city's salvation.

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 _Because we have and they have not!_

 _Because they want what we have got!_

 _The enemy is poverty_

 _And the wall keeps out the enemy_

 _And we build the wall to keep us free_

 _That's why we build the wall_

 _We build the wall to keep us free_

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It was a lie. It was all a lie. There was never any disease. As his mother had lay dying, she admitted something that made his blood run cold. In the time before the quarantine, a letter had arrived demanding that a high sum of money be paid for treatment or, if they could not afford it, they would be sent to a facility which would treat them for free.

At the time, they only had enough money to pay for his father, who would be assigned a job and who had promised to pay for their treatment as soon as he had saved enough. He had promised to bring them home.

The first few weeks where his father would come home from work- something that he had been expressly forbidden from doing but something he had done regardless - his parents would lock themselves in their room and speak in hushed whispers that he had never been able to hear. His father had realized there was no disease. He had been placed at a medical facility as a janitor where he had overheard something with his demonic hearing that he was never meant to know.

Anyone with any physical or mental ailment had already been taken away over the course of the last several years.

Those in their bustling city who were deemed to not be desirable, either based on deviant acts or lack of capital, were scheduled to be rounded up in the upcoming weeks. So his father had hatched a plan to escape the city with his small family. On the day they planned to leave, however, he went to work and never returned.

They weren't here because they were ill. They were here to "contribute" to the society they would never know.

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 _What do we have that they should want?_

 _My children, my children_

 _What do we have that they should want?_

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As she sipped on her black tea and placed it gently on the grey table next to her, the ebony haired woman leaned back in her government issued armchair and turned on the television only to drop both the remote in shock.

 ** _"There has been open rebellion in the quarantine zone. The infected have overthrown the medical health professionals and have escaped into the city. All citizens are ordered to stay inside their homes until further notice."_**

The ebony haired woman watched in horror as the police men on the television began mowing down those infected with machine gun fire, their blood oozing sluggishly across the pristine cement street.

The scene changed to a silver haired boy, who for someone as sick as he was supposed to be, was putting up quite the fight and taking down policeman after policeman with his bare hands. He stood in front of a huddle of small children of various shapes and sizes, his chest heaving up and down as he wearily eyed the men closing in around him. The woman smiled and sighed in relief as the dangerous man and those infected children were gunned down.

Taking a sip of her tea, she happily continued to watch as the police protected them from those who would cause them harm.

Their city would live to see another day.

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 _What do we have that they should want?_

 _We have a wall to work upon!_

 _We have work and they have none_

 _And our work is never done_

 _My children, my children_

 _And the war is never won_

 _The enemy is poverty_

 _And the wall keeps out the enemy_

 _And we build the wall to keep us free_

 _That's why we build the wall_

 _We build the wall to keep us free_

 _We build the wall to keep us free_

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 **Song Credit: Why We Build the Wall by Anaïs Mitchell (2010)**


End file.
